TORONTO – Looking at video images of the meteor that streaked across the sky above Russia’s Ural Mountains early Friday, many people couldn’t help wondering if life was imitating art.
Countless movies and TV mini-series have been made about meteors hurling towards the earth and threatening humanity by causing mass destruction.
In the 1979 film Meteor, an eight-kilometre-wide piece of the asteroid “Orpheus” is heading for earth and threatening to wipe out mankind. The U.S. must join forces with its enemy, the Soviets, to deploy nuclear weapons.
The film’s all-star cast includes Sean Connery, Martin Landau, Natalie Wood and Karl Malden. Henry Fonda portrayed the U.S. president.
In 1998’s Armageddon, another stellar list of actors set out to save the world from an asteroid the size of Texas. Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Owen Wilson and Billy Bob Thornton are tasked with drilling deep into the asteroid to plant a nuclear bomb that will blow the asteroid to pieces.
That same year, Deep Impact hit theatres with Morgan Freeman as the U.S. president and a cast that included Elijah Wood, Robert Duvall, Leelee Sobieski and Vanessa Redgrave.
The movie follows efforts to save as many people as possible after an astronomer and his student discover a meteor on a collision course with Earth.
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